Suddenly Ada’s eyes lit up enough to tear everyone’s attention away from Vendar and onto her.  “I think I know what she’s getting at: increasing the diameter of the phaser blasts!”

K’Taul frowned at the suggestion.  “Can we even do that?”

Ada’s eyes remained lit as she thought for a moment.  “Yeah, I think we can.  The blasts wouldn’t have nearly as high a yield, but we’re talking about a Runabout here…albeit a highly advanced one, but it’s not an uber ship.”  She looked up at Lieutenant Commander Jurand Sall, who was now deep in thought.

After a moment, Jurand said, “I think we can do it.  We’ll have to install higher capacity power relays and converters in some parts of the grid…”  He looked at K’Taul.  “We can do it.”

“How long?”

He further considered the matter.  “Five or six hours.”

K’Taul nodded in approval.  “Then get on it after the briefing.”  He sighed.  “The question now is: what happens after the Meridian’s shields are down.”

“I think it’s safe to say that the pilot will activate a transport inhibitor,” Chris said, his brow now also furrowed.  “And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t fancy the idea of building a new Delta Flyer class, we may need it soon and then not have it.”

“What about a tractor beam?” Lieutenant Commander Tom Halkrat asked, talking for the first time during the briefing.  “If we can lock on a tractor beam, we could easily get its power frequencies and engage a corresponding damping field that adjusted along with the power systems.”

K’Taul looked again at Vendar, who looked at him and nodded.  “He’s right, just some minor modifications to the beam and we’re all set.”

“There’s just one problem,” Jurand piped in.  “If we aren’t careful, if the Meridian’s traveling too fast and we engage a tractor beam…we could cause its warp core to lose containment.”

K’Taul’s eyes went wide.  “That’s one big problem.”

“Then I’ll just have to be careful,” Vendar said, staring Jurand in the eyes.  “I’ve had experience with tractor beams before, in the Academy and a little bit of experience in the Kalium galaxy.  I’m confidant I can slow the Meridian down with the tractor beam before locking on solid.”

She looked at K’Taul, who stared right back at her.  “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she replied, nodding.  “I think it’ll more or less be as easy as cake.”

Chris suddenly cleared his throat, looking hard at her.  She frowned and asked, “What?”

He smiled.  “You either meant to say easy as pie or a piece of cake.”

She frowned even harder.  “What?”

His smile blossomed even more as he shook his head.  “Never mind, sounded like you were trying to use 20^th century slang…”

K’Taul didn’t understand what they were talking about, but decided to drop it.  “All right, everyone; let’s get to work.  We’ve got eight hours before we intercept.  I want all command codes changed before then, just to be safe, and I want a battle readiness report from all departments in six and a half hours.”  He looked at everyone, then nodded.  “Dismissed.”

“Time to intercept?” K’Taul asked, reading the last of the reports on his console.

“About a minute,” James replied.

“He’s arming weapons and raising shields,” Ada reported.  There was a pause, then she added, “and he did manage to get our old command codes.  No effect on us.”

K’Taul nodded, glad that they had thought of changing the codes.  “Red alert, all hands to battle stations.”

The alert klaxon sounded once again across the bridge, the lights dimming and the bulkheads turning a flashing red.  He brought up a tactical view on his console and started looking at readouts from the Meridian.  If the Dragon had done any damage to it before hand, it had all been repaired.

“How are the final preparations on the phasers?” Chris asked.

“All set,” Ada replied, her voice more professional now than ever.  K’Taul didn’t know exactly what that meant…but he assumed it was because they were doing something new with the weapons, and she didn’t want anything to go wrong.  “The last of the converters were tested five minutes ago, everything checks out.”

“Twenty seconds!”

“Vendar, what about the tractor beam?”

“Everything’s ready!” she replied.  “It should all go smoothly.”

K’Taul nodded.  “All right, then…here we go…  Drop us out of warp right on top of it.”

James nodded from the helm, keying in the command to ready the ship.  “Five…four…three…two…one…”

The streaking rainbow star field suddenly condensed into infinite points of light and directly ahead was the Meridian, which had come out of warp right when they had.

“Fire!”

Too late, the Meridian banked hard and engaged full impulse.  Despite the wider phaser beams, the first blast missed, hitting nothing but empty space.  The Dragon suddenly shook, harder than he had expected…

“He’s modified the weapons!” Vendar stated.  “Tied them directly into the warp core!  How the hell?!”

The ship shook yet again, this time harder.  “Shields at eighty nine percent!”

“Then hit the P’Tach!” K’Taul shouted.

On the view screen, which was now following the Meridian, he saw another wide, crimson beam lance out…but this time it hit the edge of the Meridian’s shields.  K’Taul saw on his tactical screen that the shields on the Meridian’s shields were now down to seventy percent…and they had damaged the starboard nacelle.  That meant that, regardless of anything, the Meridian wasn’t escaping.

“Keep firing!”

Two more beams lanced out from the Dragon, both glancing the shields, both causing damage.  Her shields immediately went down to twenty percent and were now on the verge of collapsing…

This is gonna be easier than I expected…

Chris sighed in relief as one last beam hit the Meridian, taking down its shields.  That, however, didn’t stop the pilot from continuing his attack.  Four miniature quantum torpedoes and three phaser blasts lanced out from the Meridian, all impacting hard on the Dragon’s shields.

“Our shields are at seventy percent,” Ada said, her voice very calm.   They more or less had won…

“Vendar…you’ve got the spotlight now,” Chris commented.  “Do it!”

A highly transparent tractor beam attached itself to the Meridian, not enough to control it, but enough to slow it down.  “Sensor feed active,” Vendar said.  “Frequency isolated…engaging damping field.”

Chris watched on the view screen as the power across the Borg-enhanced sensor grids began to fluctuate on the Meridian.  The blue from the warp field coils began to also fluctuate, and a moment later, the ship visibly slowed.

“Ok, he’s trying to change the frequency,” Vendar said.  “Sensor data is directly inputting into the damping field…we got it.  He’s not going anywhere!”

“All right, then,” K’Taul said, satisfied.  “Engage full tractor beam.”

There was a pause…and then the tractor beam increased in brightness and opacity.  Suddenly, the Meridian came to a dead stop in less than a millisecond.  It was faster than Chris could process, and it wasn’t until a moment later that he realized just what had happened.

He jumped up from his chair as Vendar’s console started to sound an alarm.  “What the hell?”

Chris ran around the railing and up to her station, looking over the front of it at what she was doing…but her fingers were moving too faster for him to easily track.  “What’s going on?!” he asked.

“I…I don’t know!” she said, her voice frantic.  “I think…some sort of power surge just went through the tractor beam system.”  She looked up at him.  “It caused the power of the beam to increase twenty times over!”

His eyes went wide as one thought occurred.  “The warp core?!”

She immediately began checking, then sighed in relief.  “It’s OK…almost lost containment, but managed to hold.  However…I’m not reading any life signs.”

He stared at her for a moment, then tapped his comm. badge.  “Harriman to transporter room, see if you can locate a dead or dieing body on the Meridian and transport it to sickbay.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Harriman to sickbay, prepare to receive a patient.”

“Understood.”

He again looked at Vendar.  “Track that power surge…let’s figure out why it happened so it doesn’t happen again.”

She nodded, her face now morbid.  “Aye…”

“But first…any luck figuring out a way back home?”

Smiling, she said, “But of course…it’s me, Vendar.  I always know.”

He also smiled and shook his head.  “Then make the necessary preparations.”

She nodded.  “We’ll need to return to the coordinates where the anomaly was.”

“Then as soon as the Meridian’s in the shuttle bay, set a course,” K’Taul said.  “And engage at maximum warp.”

Chris turned around and watched as K’Taul stood up and headed for his ready room, disappointment on his face…

First Officer’s Log, Stardate 55721.7

            We were successful in reopening the temporal anomaly and making it back home.  Once again, we all lost consciousness for approximately thirty minutes, but otherwise everything went well.

With the death of the Klingon, we were unable to find out just how he knew our systems so well, and the Captain has been very reluctant to tell me anything…  I’m kind of reluctant to say it…but I almost am wondering if he’s hiding something…

Chris stared at the star field on the view screen, wondering which ones were in federation space and which ones were in this unexplored part of space…  For almost six months total they’d been out here, and half of that time they’d been alone.  It was kind of nice to interact with some familiar people again, even if they were historical figures from the past.

“Ummm…Chris?”  He slowly turned around and looked at Vendar, keeping the distant look on his face.  “Could you come look at this…”

He nodded and stood up from the command chair.  He circled around the railing and then circled around into her station, where he leaned against the console and began looking over her readings.  It was kind of difficult to concentrate when his mind was stuck on home…

“From what I can tell, the power surge initially came from the phaser power converters,” she said, pointing that out to him on her screen.  “However, something about it didn’t…well, feel right.  So I continued to do systems checks…and the power converters, each one of them, was fine.”

He frowned and stared hard at the readings, just now seeing what she was about to point out to him.

“It looks like the power surge was channeled through the converters…”

She nodded.  “That’s right.  So I was wondering if it was from another system and an engineer accidentally channeled through the wrong systems at the wrong time.”

He looked at her and nodded.  “And?”

“Well…after a full systems diagnosis…I kind of stumbled onto something disturbing.”

She brought up the data on her screen and pointed it out to Chris.  “A transmission,” he commented, reading the data on it.  Then he saw the time index on it.  “An outgoing transmission while we were still in the twenty third century…”

She nodded slowly.  “Yeah, I almost didn’t find it cause it was buried, mostly deleted and hidden…and look who’s command codes were used to delete the primary records.”

The code signature was unmistakable…and he couldn’t believe it.  He never would have suspected anything…  Or would I have? He thought.  I mean, everything makes sense now…

He nodded his head, the look on his face no doubt looking as morbid as Vendar’s.  “I’ll inform the Captain…”

K’Taul shut off his screen and pushed it away when the chimes rang.  He looked at the doorway and called out, “Enter.”

The doors parted to show Chris, who looked very morbid…  “Sorry to bother you…but I have some very disturbing news to share with you.”

K’Taul nodded and motioned to the chair in front of his desk.  “Please, have a seat, Commander.”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and moved to the seat.  As he sat down, K’Taul said, “What can I do for you?”

Chris was clearly hesitant about something…causing K’Taul to worry.  “Well, Vendar found the source of the power surge.”

K’Taul nodded once.  “Yes, she told me, it was from the new phaser power converters.”

Chris shook his head morbidly.  “No…she traced it further back.”  That’s when K’Taul’s fear levels jumped ten fold…  “She hasn’t managed to uncover the exact source…but she did manage to locate a transmission that was sent while we were in the past…to the Klingon Empire…from you.”

He stared at Chris, not moving, not blinking, nothing.  The adrenaline began to pump through his system…but then he pushed it all away.  He had accepted that someone would likely discover what he had done.  After all, he wasn’t exactly a computer wizard.  He knew his way around a computer, but there was always some sort of secret that he didn’t know about.

Finally, he nodded.  “I see.”

“I felt it necessary to inform you of this discover,” Chris said, the look on his face not very pleasant at all.  “and also that I’ll be sending Starfleet a full report soon.”

K’Taul again nodded.  “I would do the same thing in your position, Commander.  I imagine that I’ll soon be relieved of command and that we’ll be recalled to Earth for a full hearing.”

Chris nodded.  “Most likely.”

“I understand,” K’Taul said simply, leaning back in his chair.  “And I accept the consequences.  But if you would…put one thing into your report.”

Curiosity crossed Chris’s face.  “What’s that?”

“Three months ago, when that Klingon ship sent me a message,” he said, “It had a message from me…from, basically, an alternate timeline.  That message was that the D’Braul had succeeded in taking over most of the Empire in less than two months and that they had declared war on the Federation.

“According to myself, many, many lives were lost, both Klingon and Federation.  The one chance both the Empire and the Federation had…was to stop them before they could start.  And the temporal anomaly that my other self had gone through was the only way to do this.  It was our one chance to save lives…”

Chris stared blankly at him, hopefully considering what he had just said…  “I will…but you know as well as I do that they still won’t go easy on you.  You’ll likely be stripped of rank…possibly thrown in prison.”

K’Taul nodded.  “Again…I accept those consequences…because I know that it was for a good cause.”

Chris smiled and nodded himself.  “I can understand that…”

With that, Chris stood up, looked one last time at K’Taul, then left his ready room.

Everything was silent as K’Taul stared at the now closed doors.  He was about to lose his command after only seven and a half months…and to think that most of his command was out here, in this wasteland, with only a small portion of his command in Federation space.

What a career…

He stood up and moved to the couch by the windows, but he didn’t sit down.  Instead, he stared out at the blackness of space…

If you aren’t careful, it’ll swallow you whole…  His grandmother had told him that just before he had left Qo’nos for Earth.  And you’ll never be able to escape it.

“Looks like you were wrong,” he said more to himself than to what his grandmother had said.  “I’ll be heading back home after all…and this time…for good.”